Notes on the article | July 29, 2008

Dear collegues,

Recently I have read a very interesting article on the site http://www.study.ru . It is about English. I have been surprised by fresh views on the language given by its author Ilya Radchenko in May 2008. Below you will find my notes in English (the original article is written in Russian) concerning the author´s opinions with which I absolutely agree. They remind me my student´s Petr MIK remarks (see Students´ opinion (6)).

G. Vitkova

Common mistakes about studying English

Notes to the original article by Ilya Radchenko Распространенные заблуждения об английском языке

Nowadays English is the most widespread language on the Earth. It is the main communication language for people from different countries. The Internet, business, science and engineering/technologies – in all these areas you need English for successful work.

Sometimes it seems everybody is able to master English. Is English really such an easy language? Is it difficult to master English? What complicacies really exist in studying this language? And what complicacies do we fabricate ourselves?

So, when studying any European language, we as a rule pay paramount attention to grammar. And it is quite right, the grammar is a framework of each language. From the grammar point of view English is one of the simplest and logical European language. It could be considered an analytical language since it does not practically have personal endings.

Lack of personal endings in English is compensated by a quite large system of grammar tenses. Many beginners in English consider the tenses the main language barrier, which can´t be exceeded, so they stop studying English. In point of fact, the system of English tenses is legible and reasonable enough. Even if the tenses are an alphabet of the English grammar, they represent about 20 % of it.

Prepositions and articles pose another difficulties in studying English. The numerous prepositions with many functional shifts are of great importance in English. They remarkably influence lexical meaning of the text. Articles in English have important functions. They indicate singular/plural, gender or(in) definiteness of a matter.On the one hand in comparison with other European languages a number of articles in English is least of all. On the other hand the articles express (in) definiteness of an object that is obscure for us, Slavonic native speakers. Moreover, the rules regulating the article usage are innumerable with many exceptions. That is why articles can be considered a difficult part of the English grammar.

The opinion about relative scantiness belongs to another common mistakes. In fact, plenty of synonyms in English can be placed among complicacies of the language. Synonyms make evident the wealth of English. So, you may consider English easily studied. But if you do not study it seriously, you won´t master it. English may be even primitive in e-mails or SMSs, but it is ineffably beautiful when well-educated people speak it.

Hello,
I am afraid I can´t agree with you. Since I would like to emphasise the impact of reading the article on writing my notes. Moreover, in this case it deals with finishing not action, but the time period.
All the best
G. Vítková